CAPPE

CURRENT RESEARCH

Technologies Program:

This
program deals with risks and responsibilities relating to research into
technologies that combine with or add to existing technologies, including
ethical issues in bio/nanotechnology, computing and IT.

Poverty Program:

This program focuses on building an ethically and empirically based account of what development is, what standards it ought to use, and the like. Issues addressed include the measurement of poverty and global minimal labour standards.

Health Program:

This program will conduct research in relation to a range of interconnected ethical issues in the public health domain.

Ecology Program:

This program examines a
range of issues in environmental ethics, including ethical issues related to
existing and potential anthropogenic climate change.

Economy Program:

This program focuses on a number of central ethical issues arising in the economic sphere, including corporate responsibility and economic corruption.

Security Program:

This program focuses on the ethical
dimensions of a range of current domestic and international security problems,
including ethical issues pertaining to terrorism, crime, and humanitarian
intervention.

Research Grants

Current National and International Competitive Research Grants Awarded To
Centre Members

Dr. S
Clarke; Prof J Kennett; Prof J Savulescu

ARC Discovery Grant

Conscience and conscientious objection in health care

2015: $98,000.00

2016: $110,300.00

2017: $125,000.00

Total: $333,300.00

Administering Institution: Charles
Sturt University

Project Summary

Medical professionals sometimes decline to provide particular forms of
safe, beneficial and legal health care, on the grounds that provision would
go against their consciences. Bioethicists and policy makers have failed to
identify legitimate limits to the scope of appeals to conscientious
objection in health care. This is in large part because the underlying
concept ''conscience" is unclear. This project aims to advance bioethical
debate by producing a philosophically and psychologically informed analysis
of conscience, and by applying this to discussions about the legitimate
limits to conscientious objection in health care. It is expected to result
in academic and non-academic publications and enable improvements to
Australian health care policy.

Prof G Restall

ARC Discovery Grant

Meaning in Action—new techniques for language, logic and information

2015: $103,000.00

2016: $113,200.00

2017: $120,000.00

2016: $120,300.00

2017: $108,000.00

Total: $564,200.00

Administering Institution: The
University of Melbourne

Project Summary

This project aims to bridge philosophy, linguistics, logic and
computation by developing proof-theoretical semantics for a comprehensive
fragment of Montague Grammar (a formal language suited to analysing natural
languages). It aims to show how this can be implemented in software,
exploring and evaluating the philosophical assumptions grounding
inferentialism and proof-theoretical semantics. It seeks to exploit and
examine the connections between logic, linguistics philosophy and computer
science and to chart how information is grounded in our interaction with the
world and our norms for dialogue. The result is expected to be a more
realistic and comprehensive understanding of logic and language, and tools
for software that communicates more flexibly and effectively.

ARC Discovery Grant

Construing Statutes: The Interaction between a Statute’s
Linguistic Content and Principles of Statutory Interpretation

2014: $35,000.00

2015: $121,000.00

2016: $102,000.00

Total: $258,000.00

Administering Institution: Monash
University

Project Summary

This project aims to identify the factors that determine what legal
effect a statutory provision has; what effect it has on the content of the
law; in cases where its legal effect is modified by another legal rule or
principle. Such cases are commonplace, but the way in which statutory
provisions interact with other legal rules or principles is poorly
understood. The outcome of this project will be a general methodology for
construing Australian statutes which can resolve problems that existing
methodologies cannot. This will provide much-needed guidance to judges, and
will advance our understanding of important legal and political issues
concerning the effect that statutory provisions have on the content of the
law.

Prof M Pawar;
Prof R Hugman; Mr A Alexandra; Dr A Anscombe

ARC Discovery Grant

Virtuous Practitioners: Empowering Social Workers

2014: $75,000.00

2015: $73,442.00

2016: $71,688.00

Total: $220,130.00

Administering Institution: Charles
Sturt University

Project Summary

The project aims to analyse and develop core virtues of social workers
to strengthen the social fabric of individuals, families and communities.
The increasing demand for sound judgement and appropriate decision making,
often in the unpredictable and uncertain contexts, necessitates a focus on
virtue-led social workers’ action. The interdisciplinary and mixed method
analysis will demonstrate the largely neglected role of virtues and or
character dispositions in facilitating improved social services and in
building stronger communities. The research will have both theoretical and
practical implications for virtue-led social work practice that will result
in communities living healthy, productive and fulfilling lives.

Investigation of which strategies are most effective in
overcoming the ethical problems facing information and communications
technology professionals

Project Summary

This project will investigate what sorts of ethical problems information
and communications technology (ICT) professionals commonly face at work and
which strategies are most effective in solving them. An output of this
project will be an interactive multimedia-rich website that will enable ICT
professionals to deliberate on an ethical problem and come up with the best
option for solving it.

Project Summary

Debates between moral conservatives and liberals, about whether enhancing human mental and physical abilities above normal limits is ethically acceptable, have been intractable. Recent developments in moral psychology can be used to transform understandings of these debates and enable us to develop just policies to regulate enhancement technologies.

ARC Discovery Grant

A Constructive Critique of the Political Approach to the Philosophy of
Human Rights

2013: $45,282.00

2014: $31,100.00

2015: $32,238.00

Total: $108,620.00

Administering Institution: Charles
Sturt University

Project Summary

This project explores the many uses of human rights discourse in contemporary politics. It focuses on an increasingly popular 'political' approach that identifies human rights as grounds for action against states which violate these
rights. This project has implications for how the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 should be implemented.

Prof J Weckert ; Dr E
Rush; Dr M Walker

European Commission Grant

Promoting Global Responsible Research & Social and Scientific Innovation

Project Summary

This project concentrates on achieving societal desirability of scientific and technological research and innovation. That is, research and innovation that is ethically acceptable, sustainable by avoiding significant adverse effects and drives towards the common good.
Achieving societal desirability has only recently emerged as a demand of both science
funders and national and regional innovation policies. This project will:
1. Link existing international networks of RRI with relevant societal actors on a global scale
to focus innovation on societal desirability.
2. Complete a major fact-finding mission comparing science funding strategies and
innovation policies in Europe, the US, China, India, South Africa, Japan and Australia.
3. Advocate a European normative model for RRI globally, using constitutional values as a
driver to inform societal desirability.
4. Develop a strategy for fostering the convergence of regional innovation systems at the
global level.

Prof RE Goodin; Dr CH
Barry; Dr GE Overland; A/Prof L Ypi

ARC Discovery Grant

Benefiting from injustice

Project Summary

This project argues that people can acquire duties to compensate
victims of injustice when they benefit from these injustices, even when they
neither caused the injustices nor could have prevented them. We explore the
implications of this argument for the treatment of colonised peoples, and for
policies on climate change and international trade.

A/Prof N Levy; Dr DB
Cohen

ARC Discovery Grant

Challenges to moral responsibility

Project Summary

Agents deserve various kinds of benefits and burdens (such as
punishment) only if they are morally responsible for their actions. This
project aims to assess several sorts of alleged threats to our moral
responsibility, and thereby to better the social allocation of goods to
individuals.

Project Summary

By clarifying and evaluating scientific claims about the moral impacts of addiction on the judgment and practices of drug addicted persons and by investigating the perspectives of users and treatment professionals, our project will contribute to the development of ethical and effective public policy, treatment and education programs in the addictions area, thus helping to address the causes and reduce the impact of biological, social and environmental factors which diminish life potential in drug addicted persons. The innovative features of this project will enhance Australia's international reputation in bioethics and moral psychology, extend the reach of experimental philosophy, and facilitate future interdisciplinary work.

Project Summary

The global financial crisis and the attendant collapse of major financial institutions have called into question the efficacy
of financial regulation and the standards of conduct of the key actors in the financial services sectors and financial markets. Ethical conduct is fundamental to the integrity of Australia's financial services sector and financial markets. This project will make a valuable and innovative contribution to the national priority goal of strengthening Australia's social and
economic fabric by assisting market actors fulfil their professional roles in an ethical manner. By so doing it accords with the national priority goals of promoting an innovation culture and economy, and safeguarding Australia.

Humanitarian Intervention and the conflict between national and international responsibility

Project Summary

The project will address the question of how the Australian government can maintain its reputation as a good global citizen without compromising its ethical standing with the Australian people. It will provide valuable insights into the privatization of military force and the increasingly common use of civilian contractors, and may provide information to the Australian Defence Force on the ethically appropriate level of force protection for future
humanitarian and peace‑keeping missions, in addition to motivating the more efficient use of ADF resources. Finally, the project will further Australia's reputation as the source of high quality innovative research in applied philosophy, and especially military ethics.

Dr J Moss; Prof GM Cullity; Dr I Hirose; Dr S
Keller

ARC Discovery Grant

Egalitarian Responses to Climate Change

Project Summary

The project will offer significant insights into the effects of climate change and adaptation policy on the disadvantaged at a time when there is significant policy change in this area. The project will develop a philosophical framework for assessing whether current and proposed carbon trading schemes are just. In addition, the project will also consider the important political issue of whether democratic participation in the formation of climate policy is required and in what ways.

Prof L
May

ARC Discovery Grant

Morality, Jus Post Bellum, and International
Law

Project Summary

One of the primary aims of this project is to bring scholars of the Just War tradition in political philosophy and political theory into dialogue with international legal theorists and practitioners in order to build a set of clear normative principles to guide decisions concerning compensation, reconstruction, and restoration of peace and justice as well as whether and when to offer amnesties, within societies that have been ravaged by war and armed conflict. As a result, this project has the potential to provide much needed tools for the arbitration of challenging
transitional issues of relevance to the post war conduct of the Australian government and military forces.

Project Summary

Leaders are seen as exemplifying and guiding the climate of police organisations. This project will deliver comprehensive, comparative, and internationally relevant empirical data on the relationship between leaders' approach and behaviours and the achievement of outcomes in these significant, high profile public sector organisations. On this foundation the project will make recommendations on innovative institutional design to achieve ethical, effective and efficient policing capable of withstanding the challenges of the future. This will increase public confidence in policing, resulting in safer communities and improved crime control. This proposal
contributes to the ARC research priority of Safeguarding Australia.

Project Summary

Contributing to development worldwide, this research raises Australia's global standing and helps fulfil the values and responsibilities of the Australian people.
It strengthens the basis for gender‑related and poverty‑related policy development and service delivery within Australia and helps correct the current over‑emphasis, in measuring domestic gender inequity, on the more privileged women. Because severe poverty and radically unequal gender relations burden many of our South East Asian and Pacific neighbours, development aid remains an important plank of our foreign policy. By providing better tools for measuring poverty
and gender inequity, this project can improve our understanding of our region and augment the impact of our aid.

Dr GE Overland; Dr CH Barry; Professor TW Pogge

ARC Discovery Grant

The Responsibilities of the Affluent to Address Global Poverty

Project Summary

Australia is a wealthy country surrounded by less developed countries. This project will serve as a guide to a morally defensible Australian foreign policy and in
particular as an aid for policy makers working on foreign assistance, international trade, and environmental policy. It is important to observe that in order to safeguard
Australian national security it is prudent to address the issue of global poverty. Although terrorists and other threats seem seldom to be motivated by considerations
of fairness, sympathy with and support for their actions seems often rooted in the perception that they are acting on behalf of the poor and impoverished.

Dr C Enemark; Dr MJ Selgelid

ARC Discovery Grant

Infectious diseases, security and ethics

Project Summary

This project will benefit the nation directly by promoting greater understanding within the community of the national security and ethical implications of
infectious disease threats; recommending policies for responding in ways that achieve better public health, national security and human rights outcomes for
Australians; helping to strengthen Australia's social and economic fabric; and creating national and international linkages between academics, PhD students and
non‑academic professionals.

Project Summary

This project addresses the ethical, legal and social implications of the emerging field of synthetic biology, with a special focus on biosafety and biosecurity and on
the notions of life. The project will discern relevant ethical issues in close collaboration with the synthetic biology community, and analyse public debates around these
ethical issues. The current ethical and regulative frameworks existing in synthetic biology will be reconstructed and assessed for their ability to deal adequately with
existing and newly emerging ethical issues in synthetic biology. On that basis, challenges for current regulatory and ethical frameworks will be identified and
recommendations for dealing with these challenges will be formulated targeted at three relevant groups: 1) the synthetic biology community, 2) EU policy makers
and 3) NGOs/the public.

Dr J Tasioulas

British Academy Research Development Award

The Idea of Human Rights: From Morality to Law

2008-2010 : £113,741

Project Summary

This project is intended as a contribution to both moral philosophy and the
burgeoning field of the philosophy of international law. Its core will consist
in the articulation and defence of a new version of an interest-based and
pluralistic account of human rights, one that is superior to traditional consequentialist and deontological theories of human rights, and gives a
perspicuous account of the respective contributions of individual interests and
the common good in the justification of human rights. Making the case for this
theory will partly consist in showing how it enables us to address in a
satisfactory way a variety of problems that beset the human rights culture: the
identification of human rights, the delimitation of right-holders and the
allocation of correlative duties, the resolution of practical conflicts
involving human rights, the anxieties that supposed human rights are culturally 'parochial' or inconsistent with legitimate claims to self-governance on the
part of independent political communities, and certain insufficiently studied
questions concerning the inter-relations between the morality of human rights
and the international law of human rights.

Corporate Governance, Regulation and Accountability: The
Role of Multinational Corporations in Developing Commercial Advantage from
Institutional Integrity

Project Summary

The emerging market economies of India and China
have become central to world economic growth. Despite a plethora of complex
rules, regulatory reform agendas and industry‑designed codes of conduct, doing
business in these markets remains exceptionally problematic. Working in
partnership with some of the world's leading multinational corporations, the
project will lead to important practical and conceptual advances in the design
and implementation of institutional integrity systems. This work has
significant advantages for the emerging market economies and those seeking to
enter into or expand their operations there. Moreover, it will add
significantly to the visibility and leverage of Australian research.

Health, Freedom and Independent Contracting

Project Summary

The project will offer significant insights into the effects of independent contracts on the key area of rural health. The project will be able to gauge whether independent contracts offer significant improvements to the health and well being of those who use them, as well as the advantages to industry. In addition, the project will also consider the important ethical issue of whether independent contracts enhance the freedom of individual workers and in what ways.

ARC Discovery Grant

An Australian alternative to Bills of Rights and the promotion of human rights responsibilities

Project Summary

It is important for Australia to have an effective strategy for domestic human rights protection. The project explores one such strategy involving the constitutional adoption of an Australian Charter of Rights that retains and develops
existing democratic rights and responsibilities and provides incentives to the Parliament to enact comprehensive human rights legislation relating to political, social and economic power.

Dr JC Wolfendale; Professor CAJ Coady; Dr RJ Sparrow

ARC Discovery Grant

A study of Australia's ability to train soldiers to be effective and ethical

Project Summary

This project addresses the ARC's priority goals Protecting Australia from Terrorism and Crime and Transformational Defence Technologies. In the fight against terrorism and as defence technologies evolve it is crucial to uphold the Australian military's ethical commitments and international reputation. Australian soldiers must be responsive to rapidly changing threats in ways that maintain the military's core ethical commitments. By assessing current military practices in light of these commitments this project enhances the military's ability to train soldiers to be effective and ethical fighters. The internationally important outcomes of this project will also enhance Australia's high standing in the area of applied ethics.

Dr N Levy; Associate Professor JM Kennett

ARC Discovery Grant

Neuroethics: The Practical and the Philosophical

Project Summary

The benefits of the project are twofold: practically, it will enable us to better regulate, personally and socially, the new technologies that the sciences of the mind are already producing; intellectually, it will enable us to better understand human agency in the light of the new knowledge generated by the sciences of the mind, and it will help to maintain Australia's reputation as an international leader in applied ethics and in philosophy of mind and agency.

Professor J Kleinig; Professor S Miller; et al

National Science Foundation Grant

Project Summary

This project is principally concerned with the analysis of the ethical dimensions of identity management technology, eg. electronic surveillance, data base integration and profiling, in the context of international crime and global terrorism. The reconciliation of the two basic values in conflict, namely security and privacy, in the form of a framework of global ethical standards, can be deployed in the design of specific institutional mechanisms and identity management tools.

Professor J Moor; Professor J Weckert; Dr F Allhoff

National Science Foundation Grant

Nanotechnology and Human Enhancement

2007-2009: US$250,000

Project Summary

This project focuses on the ethical and related philosophical issues that arise in the application of nanoscale technologies to human enhancement. Currently, most discussions of enhancement are in terms of genetics, drugs and various medical procedures, and more recently in neuroscience. However, while nanotechnology is not the only technology involved in human enhancement, it will be a core technology that drives other convergent technologies, such as information technology, biotechnology and cognitive science.

Network of Undergraduate Degrees in Ethics, Human Rights and Institutions

June 2006 - June 2009: $424,847 (for Australian component of the project)
Lead Australian Institution: Charles Sturt University
Australian Partner Institutions: University of Melbourne, The Australian National University, University of Adelaide
Lead EU Institution: Lancaster University
EU Partner Institutions: Luiss University, University of Helsinki, Universität Bielefeld

Project Summary

In a rapidly globalising world there is a growing need to equip professionals, public policy makers and public debate more generally with an understanding of the international and trans-cultural aspects of important ethical and human rights issues and the institutional frameworks within which they arise. This project provides a unique opportunity to meet this need by bringing together and building upon over-lapping and complementary research-led undergraduate educational programs in ethics, human rights and institutions. The project establishes a collaboration between such programs based at eight different universities (four in Australia; four in the EU) in order to offer a first-rate integrated network of eight undergraduate degrees in ethics, human rights and institutions. Chief activities include: stock take of existing academic content of the partner universities' undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science with a view to establishing a strand or area in each under the umbrella theme of ethics, human rights and institutions; ensure coherence of each of these strands with one another; re-shaping and extending the existing undergraduate degrees, eg, with the inclusion of relevant governance and other subjects; promoting the research-teaching nexus with infusion of academic content, including research, from participants; administrative work re credit for subjects, study abroad program, etc. Student mobility within the network will allow access to relevant expertise and promote cross-cultural understanding of ethical and human rights issues and the institutional context within which they arise.

ARC Discovery Grant

Just Rules for Incentivizing Pharmaceutical Research and for Disseminating its Benefits

Project Summary

Intelligent reform of the rules for incentivizing pharmaceutical research and for disseminating its benefits can cost effectively decimate the global disease burden. Australians would benefit directly, through lower drug prices, enhanced pharmaceutical research employment, and improved public health, as well as indirectly, through reduced threats from foreign diseases and better relations with the developing countries.

Dr KJ Horton

ARC Discovery Grant

Collective Obligations and Partial Compliance

Project Summary

The research I would conduct is likely to have considerable impact at both the national and international level. Despite the lack of systematic work on the issues my projects tackles, the importance of those issues is now widely recognized, and so work on them is likely to be widely noted and discussed. In addition, the research will have important implications for a number of the most prominent issues in contemporary life in Australia, such as issues concerning refugees, relations with the aboriginal community, and international aid.

Dr MN Guillemin; Dr LH Gillam; Professor DA Rosenthal

ARC Discovery Grant

Hamstrung by ethics creep? Investigating human research ethics in practice

Project Summary

This project will benefit national ethics review processes and ethical research practice. It will provide the community, funding bodies, researchers, participants and ethics committee members with confidence in both the ethics review process and day to day practice of health research. As health research becomes increasingly complex, it is vital that the conceptual bases used in ethical deliberations and their relationship to research practice are made explicit. By making known the ways that ethics committee members and health researchers make decisions about research ethics and how this influences the conduct of their practice, we can be assured that health research in the future is being conducted in the most effective and ethical way.

Dr GJ Marston; Dr J Moss

ARC Linkage Grant

Disability, Welfare and Work

Project Summary

The proposed project will offer significant insights into the experiences of people with a disability in the context of welfare to work policies. The project will be able to gauge the extent to which the significant amount of public funds invested in the new welfare to work measures is effective. In 2002/03 the Australian Government invested over 300 million dollars in Open Employment assistance. The applied research into conceptual questions such as the correct model of disability, the relation of obligation to our understanding of citizenship and associated ethical issues will assist in maintaining Australia at the cutting edge of applied philosophical and sociological research.

An Integrity System for Victoria Police

Project Summary

Through a critical examination of current integrity systems and sub-systems across a range of police forces, in depth empirical explorations at the primary research site (VicPol)and analyses of practical ethical problems, a high performance integrity system will be designed and tested. The significance of this project is its comprehensiveness, its use of a reliable theory of organisational ethical health, and of a methodology that allows for the full incorporation of practitioner views. Outcomes of the project will include data generating arrangements that provide evidence of achieved levels of compliance, integrity and performance.

Dr AW Schaap

Fragility and Security: Human Rights, State Wrongs and Democratic Solidarity

Project Summary

This project will contribute to understanding our region and the world by providing a normative framework from which to judge the democratic value of security and human rights. In doing so, it will inform contemporary debates about border protection and clarify the role that Australian citizens should play in determining the nation's security interests and defending human rights. Moreover, an account of democratic solidarity will be developed, which would strengthen the bonds between citizens and non-citizens from different cultures thereby enhancing Australia's reputation as a tolerant, multicultural society. The implications of the findings for contemporary debates about the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia will be considered

Governance Research Network

CAPPE is a major partner in a new Governance Research Network for which the Australian Government announced funding on 25 August, 2004. The network, GovNet, is one of 24 new research networks to be funded by the Government.
Details of GovNet and its funding are:The Governance Research Network (GovNet)
Network Convenor: Professor Charles Sampford
Admin Organisation: Griffith University
Total Indicative Funding (for 5 years): $1,500,000
Indicative Funding per Year (2004-05 to 2008-09): $300,000

Project Abstract

Institutions and their governance are frequently part of our most pressing problems - not least in our national research priorities. Hence, institutions are invariably a key part of the solutions. GovNet unites the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, two existing networks (RegNet, ANZSOG) and several other dynamic centres to create an interdisciplinary network of ethicists, lawyers, political scientists, economists and historians. It will tackle issues of institutional governance, from small firms to global institutions recognising both common governance issues and radically differing contexts. Together with APSEG and government agencies, it will apply cutting edge cross-disciplinary, theory-driven, evidence-based research to governance issues in the region.

Mr A Alexandra, et al. 1999-2001: Australian Research Council Large Grant Innovation, Exclusion and Commodification of Plant Types: A Social And Philosophical Investigation of Plant Variety Rights in Australia.